Even though ELO is, in a way, more balanced than ever before, I think there is still a pretty big issue. A lot of clans have too many cards that are good in fairly random ways, sometimes countering the opponent's hand by chance instead of design. While the most powerful cards like Kalindra get ELO banned rather fast, the slightly OP counter-cards created to deal with them remain...

The result is that clans have less of an identity than ever, power creep is becoming more prominent, and the meta feels less focused than before the last wave of perma-bans. FPC does SoB better than Piranas. Sakrohm have a recently released 4* that's better than a recently released Skeelz 5*. And so on...

I think Standard was an attempt to solve this exact issue, and I can now see the need for a solution along those lines. However, I think there is a far more eloquent way to implement it.

Here's my idea:

-A ranked mode, similar to ELO.
-Only 8 clans playable per week, 5 chosen at random and 3 chosen by player vote.
-ELO banned cards, both temp and perma, not playable in this mode.
-To give players incentive to play both ELO and the new mode, increase rewards for players outside of T100 in both modes.

What does everyone think? Would this be a good play mode to see? Any issues, suggestions, feedback of any kind? Very eager to hear if ELO regulars would enjoy this mode.

Right now, I think any given clan can fight the majority of other clans on equal footing. What the result of this kind of mode would be is that every week, a few setups would emerge as really good. People would tinker with those setups and try to perfect them, other people would build decks to counter them. Instead of these setups and counters being obvious, like last week's "Look at all the Sakrohm, I think I am going to play GHEIST" thing that happened, some more unorthodox strategies would emerge. This mode wouldn't be perfectly balanced by any means, and it wouldn't be easy for a new player to compete in it -- but the same can also be said of ELO. I feel that by working with a limited amount of clans, deckbuilding becomes more important and strategic, even if we might get a week or two here and there where a couple of clans emerge as dominant.

Yep its called standard. design a better standard system and something like this can work.

what standard always needed was a CORE set of cards that would make ALL clans playable with a unique or subtly different flavour.

so start by having
1) a core set of cards that is standard that is bigger than the current set... and make sure you dont have silly OP cards. give us a room with some rewards to play this set

2) starting now, new cards are then added to this pool. this way the new cards are all automatically usable in a meaningful way... and we wont see so many comments such as "this card sucks compared to this old card."

3)keep adding the 8 cards a month, designing the cards with the CORE standard cards in mind for the most part.

4) keep doing it for as long as possible, keep growing this CORE standard set

5)once the CORE standard set is big enough (could take 2 years, who knows), eliminate ELO format as we know it. phase in CORE set as the new ELO format

6)restart a CORE set

this would allow cards to no longer be constantly competing for spots in ELO decks. and based on what CORE cards you begin with, you could have a generation of 6-7 power cards or the next set might be 8 power cards, or maybe even 5-6 power cards

7)Rinse and repeat until the world ends

This has been a suggestion for years.... but people dont seem to like change in these parts and feel that limiting their choices and not letting them play cards they own is bad for their game experience. In reality, it would be great for the long term future of UR

This post probably isn't going to be as comprehensive as my other one, but here's my thoughts:

First off, it isn't compulsory to play this game mode, and saying poorer players won't be able to afford it is a weak argument. Survivor Extended, for example, almost requires you to have OP cards like Graks, Jackie, etc. The records are also set with Guru Crs and DJ Korr Crs. It's a rich man's game mode, and this new mode is peanuts compared to that. Also, any player can build a deck of cheap, usable cards and play competitively. Players who recently join ELO will have a hard time making top 100, whereas we see the same players occupying those spots every week. There's no incentive because the time and skill level required need major time investment to master, and you will be winning a paltry 2000 clintz and a few credits a week.

As for Market effects, it won't be too drastic. First of all, all these cards are still playable in ELO mode (assuming they aren't banned). If we look at the prices of current cards which are banned, their price dropped by about 3-5%. Ongh, for example, was recently unbanned and his price rose about 1500 clintz, which isn't much. The effects will be more pronounced in the new game mode, but not overtly so.

1) Okay, I like it. But it has to be hand-picked and not by date, as some cards have extremely powerful recent cards (FPC, Junkz, etc.) while other clans are legacy clans (Montana, All Stars).

2) I disagree. New cards are always creeping up in power, the only new card I can think of that is weaker than an old counterpart is T47 and Nobrodroid. Have to be handpicked so new cards like Mokra, Spyke, etc. don't cause trouble.

3) They could design for that format, but then they would neglect a card's usability in other game modes.

4) Alright.

5) I disagree, as will many other players. What this will do is eliminate the need for certain old cards to be played at all. Bogdan, who lives only in ELO and is inefficient in other modes, for example, will die and have no use whatsoever. I say keep both.

6) I actually think this could go somewhere, but I suggest banning the top 2 most used cards for every clan automatically, or banning all the characters that show up in Format Election, for this game mode.

Honestly, that sounds pretty good. My issue with the previous Standard suggestions was that it was a carpet-bombing sort of approach to balancing the game, and you can see that it didn't quite work. (Although I'm happy it wasn't implemented in a way that didn't replace ELO.)

However, this particular idea doesn't necessarily aim to create a balanced metagame each week, but to keep competition interesting. It solves the problem of ELO having tons of staple cards. You may or may not be able to rely on your favorite cards in any given week, whether they're painfully OP 5*s or just slightly OP 2*s that are guaranteed to never catch ban. It's a process more akin to drafting tournaments, except for everybody getting different cards, everybody gets the same ones.

What I expect would happen with this format is that guilds and groups of players who enjoy strategic play would have a reason to sit around, pool their ideas, and try to come up with strong and innovative decks every week. The unique meta created every week would be distinct enough to elevate deck-building to a place of higher importance in the game.

Sorry for the triple post,
@Argos
Just because two bonuses cancel each other out doesn't mean they "counter" each other. If that were the case, Nightmare and Piranas would counter every clan. It just doesn't work that way. Examples of real counters:

Rescue/Montana/Frozn - Weak to SoB
Attack Manipulation - Weak to high power, Ulu Watu for example, and in some cases SoBPussycats - They are not countered by La Junta. I would say Jungo, and Freaks because they sometimes avoid the reduction altogether.
SoA - Protection Ability
etc.

I understand the point though, and I would hate to see weeks with GHEIST and Roots and not be able to use Skeelz.

1)yes hand picked
2) no you agree....trust me. you start adding to the pool now. only new cards. so you design new cards based on the existing core cards
4)so what? collectors will still collect them. you will still be able to use them in an open format like DT, DMs, etc.

6)no, just hand pick a new set of core cards

bans can come as required if balance issues pop up

@ghelas.... amazing how you sound more like the veteran players you disagreed with several months ago

no we dont need more rewards ---> we need rewards
no elo is fine and standard is gonna suck and is a waste of time ---> yeah we need something like it to renew interest
new players and their grasp of this game is equal to the vets --> now you are starting to understand....

what we need to complete the cycle is some new player who is active in the forums/games to post and disagree with your ideas while paraphrasing some of your old posts

2) No, I really disagree, trust me. I know myself.. Killing old cards and only allowing new cards will heavily affect the market, and cause players to leave. Designing new cards based exactly on old cards (like T47) is a complete waste of space, if you're going to do this why create a standard format in the first place?

I think your number 4) reply was meant for 5), so I will respond accordingly. 5) Yes collectors will collect them, but not every player in the game is interested. Competitive cards like Mona can't be used in DT (penalty), T2 survivor (too weak), and ELO assuming your core format eliminates the old ELO (totally unnecessary, and will cause a lot of people to leave, including me). So I'm just going to use my cards in the Lost Warehouse, then? Roots will be totally useless. Knocking off ELO-legal cards for reasons other than power and bringing an imbalance to the game is useless.

6) What you're doing is basically staff bans in reverse by changing a core set for every single clan. Not only is this troublesome to implement, but then ELO becomes a "what holes did the UR staff forget when picking core sets" detective game. Every core set of cards will always have a blatantly overpowered clan, because certain clans have extremely weak new cards, conversely cards with strong new cards, no matter how the core sets are arranged, will come out on top. If you have a core set of 5-6 power cards, Montana, Rescue and All-Stars automatically become the strongest clans to use.